We’ve covered Salesforce Lightning before on a few occasions, but we understand you may still have some questions. To help you out, we’ve compiled our most frequently asked questions and answers in this handy Lightning FAQ.
Why should I switch to Salesforce Lightning?
Salesforce Lightning is the only direction of Salesforce’s future. As a company, Salesforce Classic may never fully retire, but it will also not receive enhancements moving forward. Part of the awesomeness that comes with utilizing Salesforce is the 3 times a year releases featuring new functionality and capabilities. Aside from this being the future of Salesforce, at present, it provides a wealth of functionality and customization not available in Salesforce Classic. (That is, unless you heavily invest in custom code and Visualforce).
What are Salesforce Lightning Components?
Components are pre-built functions that can be dragged and dropped into your Lightning environment. When you were on Classic, you had minimal capability to customize the user interface unless you wanted to build Visualforce pages, and even less ability to reuse custom functionality. Now with Lightning Components, you can easily rearrange not only how a page looks, but what you are capable of doing while looking at any one record. If you are unable to find a component that does what you want, you can create your own.
Is switching to Salesforce Lightning Free?
Not only is this new Interface free, but you are already paying for it! Salesforce made Lightning available to you and it is part of your already agreed upon subscription. You may need to tweak your current environment so that existing functionality is not lost. If your classic instance of Salesforce has been implemented and used successfully, don’t think that continuous improvement is not essential. You should always be self-scouting, looking for weaknesses, and ways to improve. If what you have now doesn’t work, look at options to fix it.
As a first step, we recommend that you run the Readiness Assessment. It will show you all of the areas you will need to modify to make your environment entirely Lightning compliant. If you have any questions as to how to run this report, feel free to reach out to us.
Can I preview Salesforce Lightning in my environment?
Absolutely, but start in a Sandbox. Any customer with at least Professional Edition should have sandboxes provisioned. You can walk through the Lightning enablement there first. You also have controls over which Profiles have access to the Lightning interface.
What are the main differences between Salesforce Classic and Lightning?
Aside from the entirely different user interface, here are some of the main features that you get with Lightning that you can’t get with Classic:
- Assistant – Salesforce’s light version of Einstein Analytics that can remind you of activities you have not done, opportunities that are overdue, and new leads
- Account Insights/News – Relevant articles from a mix of news sources based on the record you are looking
- Paths – Help you walk a prospect from Marketing Qualified to New Customer through an Opportunity Sales Path or from Appointment Requested to Scheduled, Completed, and Reviewed in a custom-built Appointment object.
- Enhanced Notes – Enable tracking of that fuzzy information that doesn’t fit in a field but is essential in managing and nurturing your relationships
- Kanban – The old fashioned and fantastic whiteboard of records. See opportunities in each stage and drag and drop them from stage to stage. Expand this use out to custom objects and quickly re-prioritize your leads or move records between tiers.
- Dashboard 2.0 – Not really a 2.0 but an entirely new way to visualize your reports in one, slick New components and the ability to resize them make this a reporting dream. Presentations become a breeze with the ability to expand each component full screen and slide from component to component.
- Activity Timeline – Gives you the ability to view upcoming and past activities easily, with visual indicators identifying common differences like High Priority, Overdue, Email Task vs. Event.
- Lightning Pages – Allow you to rearrange your page layout easily with standard, custom, and 3rd party components. Gone are the days of a fixed two column record with related lists on the bottom.
- Favorites – Enable each person the ability to select records, reports, list views, and dashboards as “Favorites” to find them quicker and stay on top of those that are key to their job.
Any other questions about Salesforce Lightning? Please contact one of our experts at any time!
